The synchronization of data is a well known concept or technique for users, respectively, having at least two different electronic devices in use and processing the same kind of data with these electronic devices. In general, synchronization takes place between a terminal device (e.g., a mobile phone) and a server device (e.g., an application in a local PC or a dedicated synchronization server). Data of terminals, such as portable computers, PDA terminals (personal digital assistant), mobile stations or pagers, can be synchronized with network applications, applications of desktop computers or with other data stores of the telecommunications system, wherein the term data store should be understood as broad as possible, i.e. shall cover arbitrary sets of data. In particular, data of calendar and e-mail applications are typically synchronized.
Synchronization has been based on the use of different manufacturer-specific protocols which are incompatible. This restricts the use of terminals or data types and often causes troubles to the user. In mobile communication, in particular, it is important that data can be retrieved and updated regardless of the terminal and application used.
To improve synchronization of application data, a language known and referred to as synchronization markup language SyncML has been designed, which is based on the extensible markup language (XML). By using a SyncML synchronization protocol, which employs messages in the SyncML format, data of any application can be synchronized between networked terminals and a network server of any kind. The SyncML synchronization protocol works both in wireless and in fixed networks and supports several transmission protocols. The above presented SyncML synchronization technology addresses preferably the synchronization of data stores or databases, respectively.
The SyncML synchronization technology offers a flexible and effective method to update data store contents relating to different applications, i.e. a substantially automated method, in case that the first configuration of the synchronization required details has been managed. With reference to the SyncML synchronization, SyncML for example mandates alerting of the data stores that need to be synchronized. To alert the data stores, information, such as addresses of data stores (uniform resource identifier URI), type of the content stored by the data store, about the data stores is required. Currently this information is either entered by the user or sent as an over-the-air setting. For a user to enter the data store information, it is necessary to know both the client-side device and server-side device data stores. This is definitely cumbersome for the user when considering the possible numbers of data stores a single user may have on the client and/or server device.
Up to now, the required details are either manually entered by the user or in case of a terminal device having cellular phone communication capabilities they are transmitted as an over-the-air setting. As mentioned above, the manual entering of details is not a trivial undertaking and the user may face several problems and also contradicts an easy usability of terminals offering such a synchronization service.
Mobile communication service providers are aware that ordinary users are not familiar with or experienced in configuring one or more applications of a mobile phone, especially in view of the fact that the number of applications to be configured rises permanently and the user efforts required for proper configuring become more and more complicated due to the improvement of functions provided by the one or more applications. Hence, a procedure has been introduced allowing configuration of a mobile phone via the air interface, i.e. the over-the-air (OTA) setting procedure. The over-the-air setting is based on the short message service (SMS) provided among others in global systems for mobile communication (GSM). By the means of over-the-air setting a broad number of different setting can be managed. An over-the-air setting may contain address and property information about a data store of a server for configuring an application associated to the type of data provided for access by this data store. Such an over-the-air setting is received by a mobile phone and results that the information coded in the over-the-air setting is employed as a default configuration of the application to be configured. Individual configuration which includes for example the configuring of several data stores for one application is not possible by the means of an over-the-air setting. Nonetheless more restricting is the fact that only cellular mobile communication devices support the over-the-air setting while-of course-synchronization technology is supported by any networking devices not having necessarily the capability to communicate via cellular communication networks.
The above mentioned introduction has been presented with reference to the SyncML synchronization. But the provision of detailed information relating to a networked service is more common. The growing interlinking of networking devices by the means of wire-base and wireless communication networks and the employment of services provided centrally to a plurality of devices accessing the service causes and results in a growing configuration effort comprising the detailed defining information relating to the networked service to be properly established. A networked service shall be understood as broad as possible. For example, the networked service is provided by a network server accessible via known networks. Further, the networked service is for example also provided by a notebook, laptop, desktop etc. computer provided only to a locally connected electronic device such as a mobile phone, mobile handheld, personal digital assistant, further mobile computer etc. The networked service can be provided exclusively to only one participating or locally participating counterpart device.